Free RPG Day

 

Once again the store had a great Free RPG Day with a line of people waiting to get in when we opened (See “Thoughts on the Upcoming Free RPG Day”)  We had a longer line waiting for free role playing stuff than we did for Free Comic Book Day but that does make sense given that we focus more on tabletop games than comics. Foot traffic was up about 20% over a typical Saturday and sales increased about 40% over a usual Saturday as well  RPG sales doubled but I ascribe a significant amount of the increase to the Yu Gi Oh Chaos Origins Premiere event that ran this past weekend. Unlike past recent Premiere events, which ended with us having about half a case of booster boxes remaining, the lure of the first full art Yu Gi Oh cards proved too tempting for local Yu Gi Oh duelists who descended on the set in droves and cleaned us out by the close of the business day on Saturday.

Back to Free RPG Day though. This was the best one we have had in recent years. There was a wide assortment of offerings from which customers could choose and a surprisingly small number of Dungeons and Dragons/5E compatible supplements. Not only did we give away our entire order of items but we managed to clear out all of the Free RPG Day items left over from previous including Cosmic Patrol, which has been kicking around our storeroom since 2015. The only Free RRPG Day item we had left over by the end of the day was the “Enter the Collection” supplement provided by Renegade Game Studios back in 2021. As usual, I do have a few thoughts about the event:

Free RPG Day

Free RPG Day is tomorrow, June 21. Come in and take two items off the table free.  Get one more for sharing the event on social media, showing your Preferred Customer Card, wearing a Castle Perilous Shirt and for every 2 stamps you earn on a Castle Card.

 

Free RPG Day

 Free RPG Day is this Saturday. You receive 2 free items for coming in, 1 for wearing a Castle Perilous shirt, one for showing your Preferred Customer Card, 1 for each 2 stamps you earn on a Castle Card and one if you show us a copy of the store enewsletter on your mobile device.

In addition, we will have a selection of limited edition items. You may select one of each for each $100 you spend on RPGs and RPG related items.

Improving Free RPG Day

 Do not use the cover of your product to send people to your website to buy your product. This ought to be self-explanatory, but for at least one publisher included in this year’s selection, it wasn’t. It’s OK to mention your website on your giveaway but, for Pete’s sake, tell people to look for your product first at their local game store THEN tell them to go to your website. Putting a bold notice on the booklet directing people to your website when I am going to the trouble of promoting your product guarantees a trip to the recycling bin or, as we did here, a removal of your product’s cover.

More Quick Start Rules

More of this years of this year’s offerings for Free RPG Day should include quick play rules and pre-generated characters in their booklet. Pazio is well enough known to their target markets that they could use this year’s offerings as a teaser for upcoming products.  Since almost all of the other offerings fell into the category of “I’ve never heard of this” RPG, having introductory rules helps should potential customers what to expect from a full fledged version of the game. Oh, and be sure to clearly indicate on the cover this is a quick start set of rules for your game. I didn’t realize the Numenera adventure  had rules included until the day was half over.

Free RPG Day One per Box

Unless you are Blue Panther and contributing dice trays, dice towers and dice cups, or Off World Designs and putting in a t-shirt,  both of which are pretty costly, send out just one item per box is a waste of your promotional dollars and my time and table space. I am not getting things in the kit for me to look, I expect stuff in the box to come in a large enough quantity that a reasonable number of people coming in for the event will get one. I buy the box for the express purpose of giving away the books in it, not to look at your sample and decide if I am going to stock it in or not.  You should look at this as a promotional opportunity to get a teaser for your RPG into as many of my customer’s hands as you can.  Pazio, Magpie Games and Renegade all provided lots of copies of their products and lots of customers will go home with them.

Independence Day

 Open until 9 p.m today.

Stop in today and select one from a table full of independent small press RPG supplements. Get one more with your preferred customer card and 1 for each 2 stamps you earn on a Castle Card. Yu Gi Oh players may take a free promo card from the selection offered and one more for each Lost Art Card they get today.

Talk 0f the Town and Free RPG Day

 Scott will be on WDBX tomorrow at 10 a.m. CT to talk about Free RPG Day and the place of Carbondale in the history of Dungeons and Dragons

Free RPG Day

 The store will participate in Free RPG day on October 16. You can click here for a list of items available. You will be able to get one for coming in, one if you have a Preferred customer card and one for each 2 stamps you earn on your Castle Card.

Talk of The Town

Scott will be on Talk of the Town tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. to discuss Free Comic Book Wednesday and Free RPG Day. Tune in or stream later and learn how you can get free comic books and role playing game supplements this summer

DCC Book for Free RPG Day

For you Dungeon Crawl Classics fans

Goodman Games is pleased to announce that we are supporting Free RPG Day again on July 25, 2020!

This year we are releasing a special book containing the DCC RPG Quick Start Rules, plus two adventures. The first adventure is the classic Portal Under the Stars funnel that has become nigh-legendary—and even has a new set of VTT Tokens and Maps to help you play it online.

The second adventure is an all-new level 1 adventure by Julian Bernick: The Legend of the Silver Skull. We’ll give you more details on this adventure as Free RPG Day grows closer, but since it’s Julian, you know to expect something fun.

Plus, this year the quick start rules are reprinted with a brand new cover. The latest release sports the iconic DCC RPG demon skull by Doug Kovacs, printed in gold foil on a black background. 

Free RPG Day

Here are the offerings for Free RPG Day, scheduled for July 25. You get one item for coming in, one more if you have a Preferred Customer Card and one more for each 2 stamps you earn on a Castle Card on the 25th.

9th Level Games - Level One Anthology of Indie RPGs (15)

Cubicle 7 - Warhammer 40K Wrath & Glory (7)  

Dave Taylor Miniatures/Mantic Games/Army Painter - How to Paint a Library (7)

Fantasy Flight Games - Genesys Keyforge (11)

Goodman Games - Dungeon Crawl Classics (7)

Hit Point Press - Humblewood (3)

Magpie Games - Root RPG (7)  

Oni Games - Junior Braves (7)  

Paizo - Pathfinder (15)

Paizo - Starfinder (15)

Renegade Game Studios - Kids on Bikes (7)

Renegade Game Studios - Overlight (7)

Roll20 - Subscription Promo (12)

Free RPG Day Acquired

Free RPG Day has been acquired by a consortium of 3 of the top gaming retailers in the industry (no not us) who formed Gaming Days LLC for the purpose of further promoting and expanding Free RPG Day. On Free RPG Day, we receive an assortment of free FPG items to give away to you, the avid RPG player. No change in the operation this year will be interesting to see what the trio does in the future, especially given Paul Butler's avid support of RPGs.

Free RPG Day

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at this Saturday's Free RPG Day and why we like it. We will have pictures up this evening of this year's offerings.

Improving Free RPG Day

Scott's ICV2 column for this week looks at how to improve the annual giveaways for Free FPG Day

Free RPG Day

This week's Rolling for Initiative column looks at the offerings for Free RPG DAy

Four Thoughts about Free RPG Day

Some thoughts after another successful Free RPG Day. Third best sales day so far this year.

Free RPG Day Promo Items

Here's a look at some of the promo books for this Saturday's Free RPG Day. Note that the Lamentations of the Flame Princess book will be behind the counter, given out upon request only and only to those over 18.

Primeval Thule and Free RPG Day

Dear Publishers, if you are going to participate in Free RPG Day and you go to the effort of including a copy of the product you are promoting with your offering for Free RPG Day and say that item is hard back book maybe called Primeval Thule, why on earth would you only include one copy of the promo item you want stores to give away?

Seems to me you are defeating the purpose of Free RPG Day, at least from a publisher's point of view by not having more copies of the promo item for stores to pass out to potentially expand awareness of your game, rather than just having one copy available, but that's just me.

Observation #5 on Free RPG Day

1.       The Exception-The SoundSet cards from Syrinscape were an exception I mentioned earlier. From the description on the card, SoundSets are a set of RPG character sounds that a player can download to the “Fantasy Player” they install on their smart device or laptop. When their character does something in the game, they can play the appropriate sound through the player.  Syrinscape is a new company but they sent as many Pathfinder SoundSets as did a larger company like Paizo. However, the cards bearing the SoundSet codes were pretty small, about a quarter larger than a Magic card, meaning that we had to keep explaining what they were, otherwise people were going after the larger booklets. Once we explained them, people though them quite cool, but if we didn’t explain them, they got skipped. A larger card explaining on both sides what the customer was getting would help.